What is the last language known to be "dead"?

Arpeggionist

Yiddish? Irish Gaelic? Jun 09 05, 2:40 PM

lanfranco

The last fluent speaker of Catawba (a Native American language) died in 1996. However, it is my understanding that languages are dying off all the time, so Catawba is probably not the most recent tongue to have undergone extinction. I wouldn't say Yiddish was dead. I know some people who still speak it (fluently, not merely using the occasional expression), and I think I read somewhere that there is a revival effort taking place. And Irish was a required subject in Irish schools for many years. Perhaps it still is. This site has a link to a page on endangered languages: http://www.answers.com/topic/extinct-language Jun 09 05, 3:38 PM

Flynn_17

Irish Gaelic is definitely still taught in schools, and there are a lot of places in Eire that only speak Gaelic. There was a language that died recently in Russia, called Oybczuck (it has many variant spellings, though), but it isn't completely dead - their word for book is the same as the Finnish one... Jun 10 05, 5:19 AM

barker111

Some people say that Latin is a dead language, mostly students: Latin is a language as dead as dead can be First it killed the Romans And now its killing me. However, it is of course not, Latin is the official language of Vatican City and the Roman Catholic Church. Jun 10 05, 6:00 AM

Baloo55th

They're still arguing about exactly when a language does become 'dead'. Early English isn't spoken by anyone in everyday use, but it's not totally dead as its descendant Modern English is still expanding. Latin survives in the same way as Modern Italian. Cornish died in Cornwall, but its descendant Breton survives, and Cornish itself is being revived. Apart from which, when does a language with no descendants die? When the last person to be able to speak it dies? When the last person who can speak nothing else but it dies? Or when the second to last speaker dies - for then there's no-one for the last speaker to speak it to! Jun 10 05, 9:04 AM